


Corrosive Finesse

by JazzRaft



Series: Wicked Games [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 09:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12230451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: She's very good at bartering. And he's a big spender. In which the Commodore makes a deal with the Commander where they both get what they want.





	Corrosive Finesse

It started because she was bored, really. Most things did.

She’d bounced around between various contingents within Imperial borders across the course of her career. From mercenary groups, criminal organizations, security details, all the way up to army commission, she’d been to many places and met a lot of people. And among all those people, she always found _that one_ to keep her entertained between when the blood was cooling and the dust was settling and her impatience to drive it all up again was waning.

There was always _one_. There was always one outlier to the group, one separate piece determined not to fit with the rest. Whether it be by circumstance or design, one stood out from the rest. One refused to sit at the table with the grunts, bloody their hands with the killers, dirty their tongues with cheap booze and vulgar comedy. One was above the rest or apart from the rest, too scared to come closer or too far above to come down.

There was a little bit of both in Ravus.

Aranea had met one or the other, but rarely both in one man. The Commander walked every step of his life in a conflict. Like if he didn’t place his feet _just right_ , some unseen tether on him might snap in two and send him hurtling into a homicidal rampage or some other form of neurotic violence. After so many months of butting heads with the upper echelons of the Empire, she was kind of hoping to see that. Six knew it would be more entertaining than kicking her feet up and groaning at the ceiling, waiting for someone to drop an order down from on high.

If there were gods beyond that barren ceiling, then fuck ‘em; she wasn’t asking forgiveness for pushing the Commander over the edge. They should have appeased her with something to do.

“You walking my way Commander? Or are you going to make me do the work?”

She’d been taking the Empire’s paychecks for a few months by then. Plenty of time to sow the seeds of snap-up self-defense in the Commander’s spine when she called out to him. Aranea grinned at the paper-straight edge of his posture as he passed. She invited herself to his side, measuring her steps to fit with the tight stitch of his stride.

“If I could make you do any work,” Ravus said, “You wouldn’t have the time to be constantly accosting me.”

“Sure you could, Commander. Doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t find the time anyway.”

He made a sound like a cornered cat. Made a face like one, too. A low growl and a wrinkled lift of his lip. She might have sworn that the ends of his coat flicked with similar such feline frustration. The little interruptions to his austere pretense of tyranny were becoming more pronounced after every knock-down beneath her heel. Verbal or otherwise. Sometimes Aranea liked to grind him into the literal dirt of the military personnel’s combat sectors. More times, she just liked to talk him into submission, constantly subverting the scripted discourse force-fed to him by the ascetic insolence of the Empire.

“What is it you seek to ransom out of me today, Commodore?” Ravus asked then, just short of a snarl.

She would get him to scream one day. Scream or curse or, hell, maybe even _smile_. She’d settle for a full snarl, though. A shout. Any infinitesimal breach in octave of his sterile speech would suffice for her satisfaction.

Ravus wasn’t challenging, per se – she’d never pay him that kind of compliment, even if he was. He was a slow burn, demanding a unique breed of patience to maintain a proper pace with. She had to be persistent, but not over-bearing. He needed a light touch, needed to be savored before he could be swallowed. She had to break off bite-sized pieces before she could devour him completely.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have any bargain bids for you to jump on this time around,” she said in a façade of solemnity.

“Pity.”

She smiled at the curt derision. There was always some truth to it. A truth, in-and-of-itself, that Ravus did not yet seem to know. He assumed that his lofty sarcasm was too strong of a deterrent to hear anything else but the tone of his voice. But Aranea was aggressively familiar with deception. The Commander’s tongue was no such deceiver.

“Don’t fret,” she crooned, adjusting the pattern of her stride.

It drew her closer to him, knowing through practice that there was a finite limit to the space one was allowed to occupy within his orbit. Where her gravity pressed, he gradually plummeted, lateraling away from her to maintain his precious distance. He made it so easy to trap him some days. So simple to time the pace, tease the right angle, until there was no space left for him to go. His route shrunk down between the wall and her. She even got the satisfaction of seeing his jaw lock up and his eyes roll at his own inability to slip out from beneath her clutches.

“I may not have a bargain for you,” Aranea said when she captured his attention. “But I might have an even trade for us both.”

He growled, more canine than feline this time. She purred, situating herself against the corner of the wall that he was so eagerly eyeing as his only means for escape. And she waited, lounging in the space, daring him to challenge her for it. Patience, pacing, gently dissecting.

“Unless the absence of your presence is a part of the transaction, I don’t want to hear it,” he bit out.

“It could be.”

She could see how his brain stalled behind his eyes, mismatched colors blanking. He hadn’t expected that. She had yet to put a price on the one thing he desired most, keeping it locked tight in her vault of tricks. Aranea leaned forward, loving the gravity. The way he leaned back like one end of a rocking horse. She’d give him what he wanted, but he had to give her something she wanted just as much.

He wanted the absence of her.

She wanted the absence of distance.

“One kiss,” she bartered. “For no more of little ol’ me. Call it a punctuation mark for this little adventure we’ve been on together.”

He was immediately suspicious, eyes narrowing to slits. But he was ripe for it. Months of pinning and picking off the tasteless bits that had no place on her palette, she had him down to the bones. Months earlier, he would have turned on his heel with a snort and her lance through his back. Now, he was desperate. In the frosty veneer that only Ravus could be.

“A small price for something so valuable,” he said, slowly, searching her for something he would never find.

“You know what they say. One man’s trash.” He scowled, just the right amount of insulted. Perfect. “I’d say my offer is perfectly reasonable. What do you say? Right here, right now? I know how much you like your privacy.”

His brow furrowed and stayed that way. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t walk away, either. She made sure to give him ample warning, pushing herself off of the wall and dipping in slow. It was like kissing a marble statue. His lips were a hard line, unyielding to the press of her skin. Completely motionless. Save for the minute tremor just barely shaking below them. All stone had its fault-lines.

She pulled back after a mere moment, smirking in victory. She knew when he was going to break long before he did. And even when he did, he didn’t realize he had until he put himself back together after.

Ravus swept an arm around her waist and tugged her back, hard. The automaton had suddenly come to life. Marble turned to magma. He kissed her rough and he kissed her deep, and it was all she could do not to laugh in the back of her throat. Her investment paid off, and his distance was gone. He relinquished with more of it than she had expected.

The severity of his kiss was a surprise. Of all the things she could glean from the Commander that he thought no one else could, passion was not one she expected to be shown. Ravus was all fine, sharp edges and wintry regard. But he kissed like a collapsing icecap, hot-cold and devastating.

When he came back to himself, she expected him to be stunned. Expected a blink and a seizing of his body from hers. Instead, she got a glare. That she expected. She didn’t expect the _smile._

“A pleasure doing business with you, Commodore.”

“The price was one kiss, not two,” she reminded him. “I’ll have to reimburse you for the second one, y’know.”

“Ah. So there is honor among thieves.”

“You would know. You just stole from me.”

He looked far too proud of himself. It was like looking into a mirror. The high and mighty Commander, turned into a common thief like the rest of them. _Finally._


End file.
